The problem of the Albanians in our national and state life did not arise yesterday. It played a major role on our life in the Middle Ages, but its importance became decisive by the end of the 17th century, at the time when the masses of the Serbian people were displaced northwards from their former ancestral territories of Raska and were supplanted by the Albanian Highlanders. Gradually the latter came down their mountains to a fertile plains of Metohija and Kosovo. Penetrating to the north, they spread in the direction of Southern and Western Morava and, cross-sections of the Vardar. In this war, by the 19th century the Albanian triangle was formed, a wedge which abased on its Debar-Rogozna axis in its ethnic rear, penetrated as far into our territories as Nis and separated our ancient territories of Raska from Macedonia and the Vardar Valley.
This Albanian wedge inhabited by the anarchist Albanian element hampered any strong cultural, educational and economic connection between our northern and southern territories in the 19th century. This was the main reason why Serbia was unstable, until 1878 when it managed to establish and maintain continuos links with Macedonia, through Vranje and the Black Mountain of Skopje, to exercise the cultural and political influence on the Vardar Valley that was anticipated because of the favorable geographical and road links and the Historical traditions on those regions. Although the Bulgarians began their state life after the Serbs, at first they had greater success. This explains why there are permanent settlements of southern Slavs from Vidin in the north to Ohrid in the South. Serbia began to cut out pieces off this Albanian wedge as early as the first uprising, by expelling the northernmost Albanian inhabitants from Jagodina.
Thanks to the broad state concepts of Jovan Ristic, Serbia cut another piece off this wedge after the annexation of Toplica and Kosanica. At that time, the regions between Jastrebac and Southern Morava were radicaly cleared of the Albanians.
From 1918 onwards it was the task of our present state to destroy the remainder of the Albanian triangle. It did not do this. There are several reasons for this, but we shall mention only the most important of them:
1. The fundamental mistake of the authorities in charge at that time ins that, forgetting where they were, they wanted to solve all the major ethnic problems of the troubled and bleeding Balkans by western methods. Turkey brought to the Balkans the customs of Sheriat, according to which victory in War and the occupation of a country confers the right to the lives of subject inhabitants. Even the Balkan Christians learned from the Turks that not only the state power and domination, but also home and property are won and lost by the sword. The concept of the relations of private ownership of the land n the Balkans was to be softened to some extent through laws, ordinances and other international agreements issued under pressure from Europe, but this concept has been to some degree the main lever of the Turkish state and the Balkan states right to do this. We shall mention only few cases if recent rimes. The removal of Greeks from Asia Minor to Greece and of Turks from Greece to Asia Minor, the recent removal of Turks from Bulgaria and Romania to Turkey. While all the Balkan states since 1912 have solved or are on the way of solving the problems of all minorities through mass removals, we have stuck to slow and sluggish methods of gradual colonization. The results of this have been negative. That this is so us best shown by the statistics from the 18 districts which compromise of the Albanian triangle. From these figures it emerges that in those regions the natural growth plus new settlers (from 1921 to 1931 Albanian population increased by 68.060 while the Serbs show an increase of 58.745 - a difference of 9,315 in favor of Albanians). Taking into account the intractable character of the Albanians, the pronounced increase in their numbers and the ever-increasing difficulties of the colonization by the old methods, with the passage of time this disproportion will become even greater and eventually put in question even those few successes we have achieved in our colonization from 1918 onwards.
